Yesterday I attended a morning seminar at the Central Library with Jennifer. I think we had rather thought we would be two of possibly ten attendees and were surprised to find ourselves lost in a sea of other Indies - at least sixty of us of all shapes and sizes. Joanna Penn, a very successful writer and publisher herself told us more of the nuts and bolts of how to get started along the path to success. Some of it we already knew of course, and some of it we certainly didn't. Overall what it seemed to amount to was a much greater investment of time and energy and at all costs never, ever overlook the need for an editor! I knew neither of us to be all that keen on taking the latter piece of wisdom all that seriously. And we both struggled with the even greater investment of time and energy too. Jennifer already fits far more into each day than I do so I couldn't see her even pausing to reflect on how it could be done. My current pace of life at present is to meander much of the time and not make too many firm plans in order to be available for anything exciting that may turn up. At the same time I do try to write every day and often do not succeed (NOT GOOD says Joanna!) and recently I really have tried to check social media daily (A MUST says Joanna!). I feel uneasy and upset if I don't have time to read each day,.....and if I cannot find time to listen to music I can sense an attack of something nasty lurking. And once all that is done there has to be time left somewhere for meeting friends for coffee, tea or chardonnay and catching up with all that's new about their husbands, toy boys, cats or grandchildren. I have a feeling that Joanna might frown on such frivolity.
Yesterday's group of writers wrote in a variety of differing genres from Romance to Sci-Fi, Action Adventures to Family History. There was even a poet or two and a fair slice writing for children. Only a few had started via traditional publishing. At one stage Joanna quite rightly pointed out that although we would all be able to remember the titles and authors of our favourite books, few of us would be able to confidently name the publishers. Independent Publishing was now quite respectable! We breathed sighs of relief.
The event was very well organised and Joanna Penn was an energetic and interesting speaker who had done extremely well in a short space of time by publishing independently. We were both glad we went.
Oh - and she thought that blog writers would do no harm by promoting their own books from time to time. We all need something to read over Christmas don't we?
My latest three books are now available on Amazon. The Links are:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P4S2GIM Chalk Pits & Cherry Stones
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P4M66OS 8.10 to Charing Cross
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P37KX98 Deceived by Faith
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